In the News
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August 20, 2025
Michigan’s Child Protective Services “is not designed to address the welfare of children or help families meet their concrete needs,” wrote Vivek Sankaran, clinical professor of law. “At its core, CPS is an investigative agency. It investigates families, looking for parental wrongdoing. If it doesn’t find any, it often closes its case. It is not a child welfare agency because ‘child welfare’ means more than the absence of abuse. It means addressing the actual needs of struggling families.”
Bridge Michigan -
August 20, 2025
“The evidence suggests that high-quality and well-designed child-centric media can support children’s learning,” said Tiffany Munzer, clinical assistant professor of pediatrics. “However, when we think about the apps online, sometimes the business model that creates revenue for certain digital media companies can make it trickier for kids to have these higher-quality experiences online.”
ABC News -
August 20, 2025
“Our findings show that older adults who use AI in their homes find it helpful for living independently and safely,” wrote Robin Brewer, associate professor of information, who found that 54% of older Americans say they trust artificial intelligence. “However, overtrust and mistrust of AI could be addressed with better training tools and policies to make risks more visible.”
Fast Company -
August 13, 2025
Outdoor air pollution kills more than 5 million people worldwide each year, of which 100,000 deaths happen in the United States, said Larry Junck, professor emeritus of neurology: “More deaths than opioids, more deaths than car accidents, more than gun violence, more than suicides. It’s big, and almost nobody knows about it.”
MLive -
August 13, 2025
Ukraine has “fought heroically” but has lost a large amount of territory and will likely lose more, said Ronald Suny, professor emeritus of history: “The whole situation in Ukraine is tragic. Ukraine didn’t want this war. It’s the Russians who started the war. They invaded because of the perceived danger they felt from NATO, from the United States, from the West, from the Ukrainians becoming a base for the West.”
WJBK/Detroit -
August 13, 2025
“There was a lot of discussion toward the end of the election season and right after Trump got elected about ‘Did country music sort of predict Trump?’ … There are now more conservative touch points in culture that people can’t really ignore,” said Devon Powers, professor of communication and media, mentioning the TV series Yellowstone, the return of trad wives in pop discourse and the MAHA movement.
WIRED -
August 13, 2025
It doesn’t matter if you tell them it’s good for them, if it doesn’t feel good in the moment, most people won’t exercise, says Michelle Segar, associate research scientist at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender: “We’re pretty clear at this point in the research on exercise and motivation that how people feel while they’re active will have a profound influence on whether they’ll continue to be active.”
The Washington Post -
August 13, 2025
“For every one child below the poverty line, there are two to three more above it but still too close for comfort,” said Luke Shaefer, professor of public policy and social work and faculty director for Poverty Solutions. They’re in “families whose lives are a constant grind of working hard but never making it. The gains we made during the pandemic were lost.”
The Wall Street Journal -
August 6, 2025
“We need to do a better job of identifying HIV in pregnant women,” said Kengo Inagaki, clinical associate professor of pediatrics, whose research suggests that third trimester maternal HIV testing should be universal rather than risk-based to provide timely treatment and prevention of HIV in children.
ScienceNews -
August 6, 2025
“Although individual statutes do authorize limited temporary service in such posts, the administration may face legal challenges to the total length of service, especially for an acting official who has already served as an interim,” said Nina Mendelson, professor of law, on the Trump administration’s decision to extend the terms of interim federal prosecutors whose appointments were set by law to expire.
The New York Times
